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With over 25 participants the Aquaponics workshop in Ras Amba Hotel has been well attended. A full morning with lectures and debate have stirred Ethiopian policymakers and practitioners to keep looking for opportunities to start abd expand profitable fish and vegetable businesses using aquaponics technology. The afternoon was spend at Addis Ababa University to gain practical experience with Aquaponics.

A visit to all three projects sides proved inspiring for all involved. Over the past months our local agri-preneurs have faced many challenges due to the drought that has hit Ethiopia. The aquaponics units have played a major role in sustaining access to healthy vegetables during the drought. The response from the local community on the roll out of aquaponics in Showarobit has been very positive.

In Metahara construction has been finalized and the first vegetables have been harvested. 21 young graduates are taking care of one big system. Besides the aquaponics they are running a small chicken farm. In cooperation with the local government they have set up a managing system including project meetings, committees and a data collection method.

In Metahara (Ethiopia) 30 aquaponic systems have been constructed in cooperation with the beneficiaries. In one big compound these 30 systems are stacked together, each system providing one beneficiary with an income through the vegetable and fish sales. All beneficiaries will be supported by project staff present on site.

Currently, all beneficiaries have attended the Aquaponics trainings organized at different locations. Beneficiaries have been encouraged to also bring household members to the training in order to involve them in running the aquaponics system in their garden.

Apart from learning the technical functioning and management of aquaponics, main emphasis has been put on learning how to run a business. The project beneficiaries indicated that especially marketing is something they wanted training on. At all locations, a marketing junior is present to aid the beneficiaries in the development of a marketing and business strategy. Beneficiaries are free to market their own produce, although some have indicated to do the marketing cooperatively to increase their chance of success.

TGS business & development initiatives has developed the training in close cooperation with local project staff to cater to the needs of the beneficiaries. All throughout the project short training sessions are integrated to counter problems that occur within the project.

Eight aquaponics systems have been constructed for low-income households in the (peri-)urban areas of Awassa (Ethiopia). Sunrise Ethiopia is responsible for the construction and monitoring of these systems.

During construction, many people from the surrounding neighborhood joined out of curiosity. The aquaponics concept is appealing, a lot of time was spent on explaining the aquaponics concept to friends, neighbors and family.